Song to the Stars
by Th' Lady Shadow
Summary: Repost! Ecco reflects on his adventures and his abilities, derived from his nowexplained parentage. This has no 'Defender of the Future' influence whatsoever, but the game did inspire me to write this fic. Irrelevant spoilers for ye olde original Ecco.


I come from the deep tides, the vents, the ringing bubbles of light and precious air.  
  
I come from the sea.  
  
Where the waters are dark and deep, or where they are shallow and clear and their surfaces glisten like stars - the ocean.  
  
My name is Ecco: I am a singer. All dolphins are singers, but having the name Ecco makes a dolphin a song in himself, a beloved thing. Dolphins love songs. The name Ecco is a gift, a promise of talent and joy.  
  
I have lived a long, adventurous life. What other dolphin has seen Atlantis...? Which of my podmates can claim to have seen the fiery sunrise and scorching sunset of our world when it first awakened? What dolphin alive has seen the wise one dwelling in the north, Big Blue?  
  
And oh...what other being on this earth can know the feeling of breaking the shimmering barrier between sea and sky and rocketing into the air? To touch the clouds for just an instant, then come plummeting down, twisting and cavorting and twirling in an insane rush of the pure joy of being alive...  
  
It's beautiful. I could not even begin to express it.  
  
My pod could not possibly know the feeling. They were not born with such manifest strength and grace as I. I don't flatter myself with that statement -- I never wished to be different. And if not for pure chance, I would have happily lived out such a simple life as my ancestors had.  
  
It just so happened that the Vortex left me behind. For so long I wished it had been some other creature that she had spared -- wherever my pod was, I wished to be, even if it were in death.  
  
But over time I realized that it was simple fact: I was the only one of my family that could have done this. None of them could have gotten this far.  
  
They weren't actually immediate family. The only family I held among my pod were second and third cousins, half-aunts, half-uncles. For as long as I could remember, I had swam along with them, but they were merely distant relatives.  
  
Once, only once, one of the older dolphins sang a song to me of my birth.  
  
She sang first of my mother, slender and young and beautiful, gentle and virtuous as any mother could hope her child would be. She was my namesake - her name was Echo, and her gift for song was extraordinary. The dolphin told me that Echo too had the strange markings on her forehead, that Echo's song to the stars was something so poignant and beautiful the other dolphins dared not join in for fear of ruining the soliloquy.  
  
And then of my father, quiet and dark and unspectacular. He did not sing. He was not a part of the pod. He had been young, so like most young males traveled in a group of those like him. Our pods met paths and they drove off the aging male that had thus guided us. His courtship with Echo did not last long. The coupling was brief. He went on his way a week or so later. It was an entirely normal courtship.  
  
Echo did not sing her strange song after that.  
  
The dolphin singing this story to me sang that it was possible Echo was calling him with that song. I doubted it then, but now thinking about it, it's possible. Then again, thinking about it now, it does not much matter.  
  
I do not remember anything of Echo. She did not live long past my birth. One of the hungry ones, a great white beast set on blood, took after the pod. It had its evil teeth set on me, my storyteller sang, but Echo fought and distracted it while I escaped. She did not survive the encounter.  
  
So that is the extent of my knowledge about my ancestors. That is how such an Ecco came to be. I would hope that she might be proud of me.  
  
Whether she would or would not does not much matter now, either. The Vortex is gone, my beloved pod is safe and sound in their home bay now, and I've my own family to take care of. A mate -- a daughter. It's surprising how much those things mean to you.  
  
My little one shows none of the talents I possessed, which makes me grateful. She will lead a simple life.  
  
Strange -- my own life has been brilliant and wonderful, but I would not wish it on anyone.  
  
But then again, I don't need to wish it on anyone - what was lost now is found, and the absence of songs and schools is now replaced by a wondrous chorus of life and motion. All is safe. All is well. I don't miss my adventures, but I am glad that I had them. It makes a wonderful song. After all, I am a singer...a teller of stories.  
  
At night, once the sun sleeps and the stars glisten like water-drops against the great deep of the sky, the pod still sings. It's an old ritual, with a meaning that beats not in our minds but in our blood. To raise your head and sing your life, your joys and sorrows to the stars...that is beautiful.  
  
The little ones sing of constant joy and motion, knowing nothing more than the spray of water and sunshine on a day when the sky is cloudless and blue as the shallows. They have no sorrows to sing.  
  
The mothers sing of the children lost and the children grown, and the beauty of seeing a little one slipping through the waves. A mother's love. Their song echoes the happiness and sorrow of their own life, as well, but in undertones to the songs of their children.  
  
The male's song echoes strength and ability, the bliss in winning a contest or mastery of a school of fish, or the victory against a hungry one. The song of their children is lesser than that of the mothers -- appropriate, because they take less of a part in the rearing of offspring. They are protectors.  
  
And I...  
  
I always find myself singing of my journey. A little bit at a time, a piece of my story in each star-song, comes to the surface.  
  
The great Asterite, powerless in his own captivity. I had been young, afraid of it; but it had asked me for aid. The dangers of those vents -- hungry ones, vicious things with long arms and sharp claws, and long spikes shooting out of the cavern walls. It seemed then that everything was against me. Seemed that there would surely be no way out, no way to escape the nightmare...  
  
But there was. And the feeling of gratitude that the Asterite gave was something I would never forget.  
  
Atlantis -- oh, how I grieved for such wonderful creatures lost. To look at what they'd built: all for what? Such beautiful caverns and columns, all to be destroyed...  
  
Singing of the wonder of the Atlantean Glyphs delights my daughter. She imagines them to be little suns, crystals that shine brightly in the darkness, and it makes her mother laugh to hear it. They will not allow me to linger too long on the subject, and I'm grateful for that -- it saddens me somewhat.  
  
Someday all my story will be told to the stars. Nothing will be left to tell.  
  
And then, I'll merely sing of the beauty of being home. How good it is, how familiar the shift and flow of the tide can be, and how much joy I can get from the simple act of taking a breath of familiarly salty bay air. When there is nothing more to sing I will sing of how happy it makes me that my little one will live out her life here, safe from all harm, and so will her children, and their children.  
  
I have assured their safety. I am a...hero, I suppose.  
  
But I am a dolphin first.  
  
Our smiles are eternal, because there is enough wonder in our lives to keep us happy forever.  
  
And the more joy that one sings, the sweeter the song; a chorus of songs rejoice and the stars shimmer with the bliss they reflect.  
  
I am called Ecco, and I am a singer...  
  
Let my song now reach the heavens. My life is complete. 


End file.
